Workers' Party of Marxist Unification

The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification arose from the merger of the Communist Left of Spain, of Trotskyist origin but by then broken with Trotsky, and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc, based in Catalonia. Both were dissident offshoots of the Communist Party of Spain and the Comintern, and Trotsky opposed the merger. According to the Spanish source, the ICE had about 500 members and the BOC about 5,000, but the merger was on equal terms. The party criticised the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution under Stalin and was the only party to condemn the Moscow Trials, in its paper La Batalla. It also upheld the right of nations to self-determination.

Although critical of the Comintern’s popular front strategy, the party signed the Popular Front electoral pact in 1936, citing among other things its amnesty for participants in the October 1934 rising, and its secretary-general Maurín was elected to the Cortes in February. When the Civil War broke out Maurín was in Galicia and was at first believed killed by the rebels, so Nin became executive secretary; he served as Councillor of Justice of the Generalitat of Catalonia. The party backed the collectivising revolution in Catalonia from July 1936, holding that war and revolution were inseparable. George Orwell, citing party figures, gave its membership as about 10,000 in July 1936, 70,000 in December 1936 and 40,000 in June 1937, while noting they were probably exaggerated. Internationally it belonged to the London Bureau.

Its opposition to Stalin led to fierce conflict with the Communist Party of Spain and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, which remained loyal to the Comintern; the communists accused the party of Trotskyism and even of being fascist agents. In the Barcelona May Days of 1937 it sided with the anarchists, and afterwards, under the government of Juan Negrín, who succeeded Largo Caballero, it was outlawed. Nin was arrested, abducted and presumably tortured to death by NKVD agents at Alcalá de Henares; the Spanish source names Alexander Orlov. In 1938 other leaders were sentenced to prison by a high treason tribunal.

After the war its members went into exile or prison. In 1947 Wilebaldo Solano became secretary-general and La Batalla resumed publication in Paris. In the 1950s Julián Gorkín and others left for social democracy. Legalised in 1977, the party stood in the general election within the Front for Workers' Unity (FUT), which won 0.22% of the national vote. With the end of La Batalla in May 1980 the party ceased to exist as an organisation, though it was never officially dissolved, and its Valencia branch remained active until 1981.